Towns

Aegir · Post by **Aegir** » 27 Dec 2005 11:09

Town zones

I've been discussing this with Csaba and Oskar, and they recommended I create a topic about it.

Okay, my idea here is that town zones should be changed, so that, similar to Sim City, we have Commercial, Residential, and Industrial, with light and dense varieties of each. Dense Commercial would be at the centre of cities, with very tall, large buildings, light commercial would be smaller shops and maybe larger shopping malls furhter out, in suburban areas. Dense Residential should be closer to the city centre, with large blocks of flats/apartments, maybe hotels aswell (Or have hotels as part of commercial). Light Residential should be further out, and resemble suburban areas.

Industrial is the interesting point though, as it differs a fair bit from stock TTD, which already has commercial and residential placed almost like how I described.

Light industrial should comprise of warehouses, small factories, car wrecking yards, etc. Some parts of Light Industrial would technically be commercial, but for TTD's sake, and for how the buildings will be placed, they should be part of light industrial. These should be placed as normal buildings, that accept different cargoes, but do not produce (Unless Csaboka wants to fix that). These areas should be where RV's take goods in a town, or small railways.

Dense Industrial however should be made up of seccondary TTD industries, regular industries, not town buildings. Things like Steel Mills, Textile mills, chemicle plants, etc. Primary industries should still be placed further out in the middle of no-where, far from towns.

There would be the option to take cargo to the light industrial areas, which change around often as towns grow, and do not produce anything, or deliver to the dense industrial areas and get goods produced in return. Food processing plants should also be in the dense industrial areas, and produce food to take into the light commercial areas for the super-markets/malls.

TTD, at the moment, generates towns in a circular pattern, from the centre of the city (Zone 4) to the very outer edge (Zone 0). This results in thin bands of buildings.

I was originally planning to use this idea for towns building placement:

4 Dense Commercial
3 Dense Commercial / Dense Residential
2 Light Commercial / Light Residential
1 Light Residential / Light Industrial
0 Dense Industrial

But, instead of that, having clusters of buildings would be much better. The centre of cities should still be tall sky scrapers, big buildings. But then the rest of the city should be taken up by clusters of residential and light commercial areas, and then the last clusters of light industrial, with the big industries being on the very outskirts.

Well those are my ideas. eis_os, Csaboka, what more do you have to add?

StopRightThere · Post by **StopRightThere** » 27 Dec 2005 15:36

If the devs did add car wreking yards, scrapheaps etc maybe scrap metal could be transported from factories. My thoughts anyway. Also maybe there could be little nuclear silos in the towns and toxic waste could be a goods type too.

Axlrose · Post by **Axlrose** » 28 Dec 2005 09:50

Would this potential idea mean industries are moved closer to a city instead of many times being out in the middle of nowhere? I understand farms and mines being away from civilization. But factories, mills, and plants being away from everything seemed backwards. Thus certain industries might have to be flagged as part of a city's creation while others are flagged as middle-of-nowhere (or some other fancy name).

Good idea though.

Post by **WWTBAM** » 28 Dec 2005 10:01

the ones like breeweries would be put near the dge of a city.

Aegir · Post by **Aegir** » 28 Dec 2005 10:15

r0b0t_b0y2003 wrote:the ones like breeweries would be put near the dge of a city.

They already are, but from what I discussed with eis_os and Csaboka (Mainly Csaboka), town growth is somthing that needs to be taken into account.

Just waiting for Csaboka to reply, however.

Axlrose, That's part of the plan, move a lot of the 'seccondary' industries closer into towns, and have some more industrial parts of town that accept different types of cargo, albeit without any production. The idea is that what these little factories in the town, do produce, would stay in the city anyway, so no point in creating transportable goods. Quick cash for delivering goods, but with a lot of downfalls of having a very, very dynamic nature.

SuperTycoon · Post by **SuperTycoon** » 28 Dec 2005 16:56

What about wealth types like SimCity too? an area with poor transport coverage could degrade to low wealth, and you could have slums, and even the infamous donut effect (the hollowing out of town centres because no-one wants to live their due to the traffic chaos)

Aegir · Post by **Aegir** » 29 Dec 2005 09:49

That's getting a little too complex, though, SuperTycoon.

Csaboka · Post by **Csaboka** » 29 Dec 2005 10:05

It would be nice to add a new zoning to the existing scheme. The problem is, how should those new zones be determined?

We need an algorithm that works for every possible town shape, and scales well as the town grows. It would be also nice to be able to tell the zone of a tile from the coordinates relative to the town center (i. e. we wouldn't need to store the zone information for every tile).

To be honest, I don't know such an algorithm that would give realistic zones. I'm open to suggestions, though, since supporting this kind of zoning wouldn't be too hard in newhouses (just a new 4x variable).

Post by **WWTBAM** » 29 Dec 2005 10:16

have it as aegir suggested. Also the tile under the sign could be (0,0) in relation two the boundries of the towns council area assuming the area it owns is a square. and its in the centre. So to put it simply think of the squares in the towns council as a number plane.

Csaboka · Post by **Csaboka** » 29 Dec 2005 10:24

r0b0t_b0y2003 wrote:have it as aegir suggested.

Aegir only said the zones should form clusters. That's not an algorithm, just a requirement.

r0b0t_b0y2003 wrote:Also the tile under the sign could be (0,0) in relation two the boundries of the towns council area assuming the area it owns is a square. and its in the centre. So to put it simply think of the squares in the towns council as a number plane.

I'm afraid I can't understand you. If you can't put it into words easily, you could draw a small example of what you mean.

Post by **WWTBAM** » 29 Dec 2005 10:35

The town would be in the centre of its la area and each square would have its own coordinates for example the central tile would be 0,0.

Csaboka · Post by **Csaboka** » 29 Dec 2005 10:47

r0b0t_b0y2003 wrote:The town would be in the centre of its la area

The town center is already in the center of the LA area.

r0b0t_b0y2003 wrote:and each square would have its own coordinates for example the central tile would be 0,0.

Squares already have their own coordinates. Getting coordinates relative to the town center is easy: you just subtract the coordinates of the center from the absolute coordinates.

The question is how the zones should be determined, not which coordinate system to use.

jonty-comp · Post by **jonty-comp** » 29 Dec 2005 14:29

I think I get what r0b0tb0y is trying to say: The algorithm could place buildings by looking at their coordinates relative to the Town centre:

0,0 - 5,5 =Dense Commercial
5,5 - 10,10 =Dense/Medium residential and a few random light commercial
10,10 - 20,20 =Light residential and a few random light commercial
0,0 - 15,15 =Light industrial
25,25+ =Dense Industrial

The numbers could scale up as the town gets bigger.

I'll try and use SimCity 3000 to make a model, but it might take a while: I'm playing Worms Armageddon at the moment!

EDIT: Pic done!...

eis_os · Post by **eis_os** » 29 Dec 2005 15:39

The picture doesn't reflect the algorithm you have in your text

jonty-comp · Post by **jonty-comp** » 29 Dec 2005 16:41

Well, the text was just an example.

The picture shows my real idea.

Flamelord · Post by **Flamelord** » 29 Dec 2005 21:44

A nice idea, though I disagree with the light residential extending out to the heavy industrial. It's more likely that we'd have to stop the residential somewhere inside the range of the industrial areas. I would suggest a model more like the one attached. It throws in some nice randomness and is closer to my perception of cities, though I may be wrong. Note that there is a layer of medium industry between the lightest residential and the heavy industry.

Aegir · Post by **Aegir** » 30 Dec 2005 01:47

I like jonty-comp's example, it shows how the large industries need to be placed outside the city (The ones that aren't placed as town buildings), but overall, we need to think about how a small city would start off, and then grow, with the zoning.

Not only that, but as Csaboka said, it needs to be able to deal with cities of all shapes and sizes.

Post by **WWTBAM** » 30 Dec 2005 02:01

I think it sjould work in a similar way to it currently does so you start with residential and as you send passengers the town would build more residential and replace a small amount of the centre with comertial and so on. The only problem with this is that industries placed at the start would get stuck in the wrong zone.

JenovaUK · Post by **JenovaUK** » 01 Jan 2006 10:15

Not really, Edinburgh has a few breweries near the city center. I think one or two of them are closing now, but they have been there for the last 80+ years.

Maybe if you really wanted an industry to move, you could pay for it to be re-located? I should cost an arm and a leg though and you should have no control over where it's moved to.

Prebral · Post by **Prebral** » 01 Jan 2006 11:59

Some thoughts about placemenet and relocating of industrial zones...

During 19th century, many large european cities used to found industries just beyond (obsolete) city walls, close to some of neighboring villages. Industrial zones usually boosted that place's development, but during 20th century, new industries were again placed on the edge of the city. Old industrial zones became surrounded by the city, but due to ecologic problems and economy shifts, heavy industry was often replaced by light industry there and old brownfields were also often converted to commercial zones.

Btw, is it possible to force a "city" building to produce for example grain in addition to passengers?

There may be some zoning approaches based on this depending on the industry type:
1) raw materials - usually anywhere, but not in the city. Farms, for example, need a large area. These could be old TTDX industries. On the other hand, very small towns may have some farmsteads producing a little amount of grain/livestock in addition to passengers and mail. Also, old industrial towns may have for example some minor coal mines ran by local owners, but these should disappear up to 1950s.
2) goods, beer...light industrial zones may somehow produce these kinds of cargo. Usually present at medium-sized and larger towns, almost anywhere on the outskirts.
3) steel, oil...heavy industries should probably stay as they are.

Trying to figure out, how a city development should look like, I figured out following three schemes. I do not know if it is possible, however:

Agricultural
Stage 1 - village: small village, one zone, producing small amounts grain and livestock in addition to passengers and mail
Stage 2 - small town: two zones - outer as previous, inner more residental/accepting goods
Stage 3 - large town: three zones - citylike at center, then residental/light industry (accepting wood, grain, livestock, goods...or goods), outer agricultural. Tourist buildings appear at the center.
Stage 4 - city: zoning like large town, but light industry moves to edge, where it replaces former agricultural buildings
Stage 5 - large city: about four zones - commercial at center. Then old residental. Then light industry/mixed. Then new residental(new satellite villages, prefabs)-commercial(shopping parks)-light industry areas. The fourth zone types are not mixed together - there can be only one type of area at a place.

Industrial
These are cities, that arose around some industrial zones, usually during 19th century.
Stage 1: a light industry zone only
Stage 2: a light industry zone surrounded by residental
Stage 3: both zones mix more together as secondary industries appear, some old industrial objects at the center are converted to commercial
Stage 4: city expands, not much changes - this city type is not as differentiated as the agricultural one. One or two commercial districts appear, but some light industry still remains at the center. Tourist bulidings appear anywhere.
Stage 5: fourth "urban sprawl" zone appears similar to fourth zone of agricultural city

Old city
Mostly historical cities and pre-industrial non-agriculutral settlements.
Stage 1: small residental, accepts few passengers and tourists
Stage 2: light industry zone appears at outskirts
Stage 3: center becomes more commercial, outer zones are light industry/residental but not much mixed
Stage 4: city expands with almost all light industries being converted to commercial/residental zones. Light industry remains only at the outer rim.
Stage 5: Similar to Stage 5 of agricultural town.

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